Organizational Distance Also Matters: A Case Study of Distributed Research Teams and their Paper Productivity

Abstract

Geographically dispersed teams often face challenges in coordination and collaboration, lowering their productivity. Understanding the relationship between team dispersion and productivity is critical for supporting such teams. Extensive prior research has studied these relations in lab settings or using qualitative measures. This paper extends prior work by contributing an empirical case study in a real-world organization, using quantitative measures. We studied 117 new research project teams within a company for 6 months. During this time, all teams shared one goal: submitting a research paper to a conference. We analyzed these teams' dispersion-related characteristics as well as team productivity. Interestingly, we found little statistical evidence that geographic and time differences relate to team productivity. However, organizational and functional distances are highly predictive of the productivity of the dispersed teams we studied. We discuss the open research questions these findings revealed and their implications for future research.CCS Concepts: • Human-centered computing → Human computer interaction (HCI); Haptic devices; User studies.

Human resources challenges in global health organizations: Managing a diverse and dispersed workforce

“…The impact of geographic dispersion on workforce productivity has been a subject of study, with some research indicating that it does not significantly affect team productivity (Wang, 2021). However, it is important to note that dispersed supply chains involve trade-offs, such as increased logistics costs and longer response times, which can erode customer service levels and competitiveness (Lorentz et al, 2012).…”